‘news of the world’s paul greengrass & helena zengel on the healing power of truthful storytelling – contenders film
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Though it tells a story set 150 years in the past, the Paul Greengrass-directed _News of the World_ re-teams the filmmaker with his _Captain Phillips_ star Tom Hanks in an Old West tale from
Universal Pictures about a country trying to heal. Hanks plays Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a beaten-down Confederate soldier who spends his time after the Civil War going from one Texas town
to another to read newspaper stories to the occupants, who are looking for light to inspire their hard lives. Along the way, Kidd encounters a 10-year-old girl (Helena Zengel) whose life
has consisted of one horror after the next, most recently when she was raised by the Kiowa tribe that killed her family years earlier. Their bond slowly grows as he escorts her to the only
living relatives she has left. Contenders Film: Deadline’s Complete Coverage Appearing at Deadline’s two-day Contenders Film awards-season event, Greengrass discusses the influences and
reasons he chose to make this Western with Hanks, including the healing power of truthful storytelling, and how much the young German actress Zengel, who has drawn raves for her work, helped
the process. And how a movie made before the pandemic became even more prescient with the advent of the global Covid epidemic. Check out the panel video above.